Louis Piquett, Dillinger’s lawyer who had arranged the surgical contacts, was charged with harboring a fugitive. He was convicted and disbarred. Arthur O’Leary, the attorney’s investigator who had served as an intermediary, was also prosecuted.
The legal aftermath of the Dillinger case swept up a significant network of people who had assisted him during his final months. The prosecutions served multiple purposes for the FBI: they demonstrated that assisting a federal fugitive carried serious consequences, they documented the network of support that had enabled Dillinger to operate, and they closed off the legal loose ends that the death had left open.
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## The Gang’s End: Van Meter, Nelson, and the Others
Homer Van Meter, who had undergone the same fingerprint removal procedure as Dillinger at James Probasco’s home, survived slightly longer than his associate. He was shot by police in an alley in St. Paul, Minnesota on August 23, 1934 — thirty-two days after the Biograph shooting.
Van Meter had been a volatile presence throughout the gang’s history. He had reportedly threatened to kill Dr. Loeser after the fingerprint procedure, and he had participated in bank robberies that were more violent and chaotic than the operations Dillinger preferred. His death in a St. Paul alley closed one of the remaining threads of the network.
Baby Face Nelson — Lester Gillis — outlasted both Dillinger and Van Meter but not by long. On November 27, 1934, the same evening he killed FBI Agents Samuel Cowley and Herman Hollis in an ambush near Barrington, Illinois, Nelson was fatally shot. He died later that night. His death closed the most violent chapter of the entire Public Enemy Era: Nelson had killed more law enforcement officers than any other criminal of the period.